


Rising: or, The Only Way is Up (Baby)

by GloriaMundi



Category: Flatland - Edwin Abbott, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: cliche_bingo, Crack, Crossover, Gen, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-31
Updated: 2009-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:59:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McKay is trapped. Sheppard talks him out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rising: or, The Only Way is Up (Baby)

Of _course_ they came to Rodney: he was, after all, the pre-eminent scientist in the country, and if he couldn't determine the intruder's nature then who could? Never mind that he was in the midst of some very important experiments — wholly theoretical at this stage, of course — concerning the existence and nature of other dimensions. Never mind that he couldn't recall the last time he'd slept. He was hurried towards the prefect's Palace, his protests disregarded, and forced en route to listen to his minions babbling about a Figure 'appearing out of nowhere' and other such rank improbabilities.

Rodney took a moment to muster himself outside the door: then, sweeping in majestically, found himself confronted by a Figure he had never seen before. Without the slightest symptoms of angularity the intruder nevertheless varied every instant with gradations of size and brightness scarcely possible for any Figure within the scope of Rodney's experience.

Rodney was perplexed, and also — hello, scientist! — wildly intrigued. But before he could say a word, or carry out any preliminary observations, the intruder said, "McKay! What kept you?"

"Do I know you?" enquired Rodney suspiciously. The intruder had spoken with the rich, measured tones of a true Circle — a many-sided Polygon, at the very least — but Rodney had learnt from bitter experience that the lower classes could, by long practice, feign the voices of their betters.

"Of course you know me, Rodney. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard? USAF? Your team leader?"

Rodney could only rotate blankly.

"Look, is there somewhere we can talk?"

"Leave us," commanded Rodney, and the lesser Circles and their hangers-on immediately, with flattering haste, charged for the doorway.

"Right," he said to the intruder. "Let's assume you're not mad, though frankly I have my doubts. What was all that about Colonels and Teams and Shepherds?"

"Okaaay," said the intruder. "They did say the trauma of translation might've ... affected you."

"They? Who's 'they'? ... And who are you? Try to make sense this time."

"I'm Sheppard. I'm your friend, Rodney, and I've come to get you out of here."

Rodney could not help but glance towards the doorway, where his minions were avidly eavesdropping. They receded at his minatory glare.

"What do you mean, out of here? And what's this about you appearing out of nowhere?"

The intruder — Sheppard — seemed to shrink for a moment, but when Rodney looked again he was back to his former size. "This is gonna be hard to explain," he said.

"Try me. No, wait: let me feel you."

"You what?"

"Let me feel you — and be felt by you, of course. Yes, yes, I know it's irregular, but I — I have to say I can't make sense of what I see when I _look_ at you. How else am I going to get to know you if I don't feel you?"

"Whatever," muttered the intruder: then, louder, "Go ahead."

"Stand still, then!" Rodney moved forward and felt the intruder. It was a marvellously unsettling experience. The intruder's sides were so small as to be scarcely tangible, and the angles that Rodney felt were obtuse as anything.

"You are practically a Circle," he breathed: then, regaining his poise, "unless you're some revolting Irregular, come here to feel me under false pretences or stab me with your nasty acute angle!"

"Let's leave my angles out of this," said Sheppard, exasperated. "Just relax, Rodney. Look — it's not real, okay? They're making you believe you're trapped in two dimensions, but really? Really you're lying on a couch in a temple on —"

"Well, of course I'm in two dimensions. What else would I be? No, wait, this is a trick question, isn't it? You've somehow found out about my research, and —"

"What if I told you I'd come here from Space?" said Sheppard.

"Space? What the hell are you on about? Some insanity —"

"Come on, Rodney. You're the smartest guy in two galaxies —"

"According to whom?"

"According to _you_. So trust me when I say there's more than two dimensions: you're thinking in two dimensions because someone made you think that. You're trapped, and we need you back. Remember P8X-222?"

"I don't know what you think you can achieve —" blustered Rodney.

"P8X-222, Rodney. You upset the Prime Sphere — their head honcho — and she sentenced you to, what was it, 'dimensional reduction'."

"Reduction? Oh, right, very funny. Look, I appreciate the joke, really I do, but anyone with half a brain who's read my recent papers on multiple dimensions could've come up with this scenario. Let me guess: this is where you tell me there's a third dimension, and you've come from there with a Secret Message which will win me fame and glory."

"Kinda. Look, I, er, managed to persuade the Prime Sphere to let me come and talk to you."

"Persuaded?" Rodney found himself rotating in agitation. This whole situation was ridiculous, and patently bad for his health. "With your acute angle, I suppose."

"I can be nice when I have to," said Sheppard defensively.

"Huh." Rodney fell silent for a moment. "Does the word 'Kirk' mean anything to you?" he enquired at last.

"It means you're starting to remember me," said Sheppard.

"Ha! Okay. We're trapped here — wherever here is. Hey, it's like that book. Flatland. We're in Flatland!"

"Good, Rodney, you're doing great. You're remembering."

"... How did we get here, exactly?"

There was a sense of frustrated motion from Sheppard. "Ancient ... thingy."

"Right. Of course. Oh my God," said Rodney, who had worked up quite a spin. "I'm a _shape_."

"It could be worse," said Sheppard. "You could be a Square."

"I'll have you know my circumference ..." But Rodney's heart (assuming he had one in this ridiculous parody of two-dimensional space) was no longer inclined to argument. "How do we get out of here?" he snapped, concentrating on slowing his rotation and quelling the nausea at his centre.

"You're the genius, Rodney. You just need to remember up."

"I ... I've got nothing," Rodney confessed. "I mean, I know the _word_, but ... I can't work out which way it is." He stared at Sheppard, willing him to explain: if he was truly a Circle his intellect would be of the very highest power, but by his own admission he was an outsider, an imposter ...

He must have voiced some of this objection aloud, for Sheppard said patiently, "I'm not a Circle, Rodney: I'm a Sphere. It's the only way they'd let me in. What you're seeing right now is just a section of me — a two-dimensional section of a three-dimensional form."

_Now_ Rodney was hooked. Okay, it was hard to listen to Sheppard's flat, simplistic analogies, his elementary mathematical progressions ("a single point is one terminal point; a line has two terminal points; a square's got four; what's the next number?") without interrupting the Figure to share his own remarkable findings. (But, hang on: illusion, right? In which case, had he really been working on dimensional theory? And if so, why the hell?) Sheppard was droning on about 'rising', whatever that was: and now he was —

"What the fuck?" said Rodney, his voice drowning out the shocked cries of his nosy minions as Sheppard diminished and vanished.

"Believe me yet?" came Sheppard's voice, hollowly, from ... from nowhere. "Hey, we've got quite a crowd: I can see 'em all outside the door, and I've got to tell you they're pretty excited about what we're up to in here."

"Show me how to do that," said Rodney eagerly.

A tiny dot appeared, and gradually grew in size: then Sheppard was before him once more, close enough to touch.

"I'll show you my acute angle," he murmured, "if you come up with me."

"Don't be stupid," Rodney said reflexively: "a Polygon — or whatever you call yourself — as smooth as you doesn't have any angles that aren't obtuse." Truth be told, Rodney was strangely affected by Sheppard's promise, but the _premise _still confounded him. "Up? You mean North?"

"I mean _up_, Rodney." There was more than a hint of impatience in Sheppard's voice. "The only way is up."

"Baby," said Rodney, without meaning to. "Wait, what?"

"Think of Atlantis," said Sheppard. "Think of standing on the balcony at the top of the highest tower, Rodney, looking out over the ocean. It's really, really blue. Imagine you're feeling —"

"—vertigo," said Rodney, again without conscious forethought: and suddenly he found himself assailed by quite a different affliction: as though he was being crushed, squashed, deformed. As though he couldn't move, couldn't —"Sheppard! Get me out of here! I can't breathe!"

"Up, Rodney, think _up_. Here, let me —" And there was the most peculiar sensation — a tugging, a pressure deep at his centre, a not-pain, a not-pleasure, something hot and cold and unutterably strange.

"No! Ow! You're hurting —"

"Then come on! Come up!"

There was a darkness; then a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, "Either this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither," calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, "it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily."

Epilogue:

"Okay, but I still maintain that if you'd left me there a few more days I'd have made some major breakthroughs in dimensional math —"

"What, and proved the existence of the third dimension? I don't know how to tell you this, McKay, but it's kind of pointless."

"Point— oh, very good. No, what I meant was a theory that'd simplify the way we think about the Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimensions of irregular sets, and the fractal dimensions, and —"

"Okaaay. Listen: you know I promised you a look at my acute angle ..."

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Text in italics near the end is a direct quote from [_Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions_](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/201/201-h/201-h.htm#chap16), by Edwin Abbott.


End file.
